Southern Ohio Museum

Let’s make it four. With nothing planned for the week following a string of three museum visits, my thoughts naturally turned to extending the streak. Museum visit number one was the result of an online article, number two happened because of a friend’s suggestion, and number three came from a search for “Cincinnati museums”. Thinking to extend the range along with extending the streak, I searched for “southern Ohio museums” and found not only several museums in that area but one with that exact name.

A sunny day was all it took to get me to head to the Southern Ohio Museum in Portsmouth, Ohio. Without question, my willingness to make the two-hour drive was boosted by the fact that Portsmouth has a mighty fine brewery and an outstanding collection of Robert Dafford murals.

A small group of students were being given a tour of the museum’s lower gallery when I arrived and I briefly tried to eavesdrop on their guide but soon gave that up as a bad idea and headed upstairs. Here the displays are mostly semi-permanent. Many items displayed are from the museum’s permanent collection but may change from time to time. The photos are of works by Ohio artists Gretchen Stevens Cochran, Craig McDaniel, and Clarence Holbrook Carter. Everything in the museum has an Ohio connection of some sort.

“Art of the Ancients” is the only truly permanent exhibit in the museum. Thousands of artifacts from the Adena, Hopewell, and other indigenous cultures are displayed here. The museum occupies the former headquarters of the Security Central National Bank of Portsmouth and some of the bank’s coin-related trim can be seen in the third photo. In that same photo, Gretchen Stevens Cochran’s “Bounty or Burden” can be seen in the background.

When I returned to the first floor, the students were wrapping up their tour at the far end of the gallery. This space is used for temporary exhibits and is currently occupied by “The Power of the Object“. Maureen Cadogan’s collection of objects from “the journey and experience of African American people” is augmented with several quilts made by neighbor Holly Davis. The exhibit is arranged chronologically with some of the oldest items in the collection being the slave collars in this photo.

The poster on the wall in the grouping just beyond the collars really drew my interest because of some personal memories. The text beside the poster says “Though Minstrel shows gradually disappeared from professional theaters, its impact and imagery continued… well into the twentieth century.” To that, I can attest. My high school staged minstrel shows as late as 1964 or ’65. I recall two of these shows and a school yearbook indicates these were during my freshman and senior years. There is no information reported about the actual shows.  The indications I refer to are individual students listing the shows among their activities. I listed participation during my freshman year only. I recall being in the chorus and a short skit but I’m sure that by the time of that second show, it had become apparent to all that my presence in any vocal group was not helpful. I have found no photos of these shows. The closest is a small picture of a parade presumedly promoting the 1964/5 show. I believe that is me carrying the bass drum.

I also have some vague memories of seeing items similar to those in the mammy-themed display in the homes of relatives and friends. I have less vague memories of an alligator pencil holder like this one at my grandparents’ house. I do not have any personal memories of the toys in the third photo but a recent online discussion about a real-life version of the Baby Rack game that a friend encountered while researching amusement parks made this pressed steel version jump out at me. Brinkman Engineering Company is now Brinkman Tool & Die and no longer manufactures toys of any sort.

There is indeed power in these objects. They clearly can bring back memories including some that aren’t particularly welcome. It is also pretty obvious that they can make things outside our personal experience more real. Objects near the exhibit’s end provide evidence that as crappy as race relations sometimes seem, they have improved.

I’m sure I would have enjoyed visiting the Southern Ohio Museum regardless of what was in the temporary gallery but I’m very happy that I learned of the museum before “The Power of the Object” goes away. That will happen in just a few days, on March 27. Other exhibits will follow, of course, and I now have a reason on beyond murals and brews to visit Portsmouth.

Greater Cincinnati Police Museum

For the third week in a row, I’m posting about visiting a new-to-me museum. The first of the three (Small Wonders (And More)) was triggered by an online reference and the second (Miami Valley Veterans Museum) by a friend’s spontaneous suggestion but this one is completely on me. I say that I use canned posts here when my life is either too busy or too boring. My life was not too busy this week but, without some purposeful action on my part, it would have been too boring and I’d have posted something from the warehouse. That purposeful action was little more than typing “Cincinnati museums” into a search engine and scanning the results.

Quite a few lists turned up, and there were several museums that appeared on nearly all of them. One came from TripAdvisor, one of my favorite providers of crowd-sourced lists. The Greater Cincinnati Police Museum is currently number one on their list of Cincinnati Museums when sorted by “traveler ranking” and sixth when sorted by “traveler favorites”. More importantly for my purposes, it was the only top twelve entry by either sorting method that I had not visited.

I soon corrected that and soon learned that those high marks at TripAdvisor were well deserved. The museum is on the second floor and, while things are well-marked outside, figuring that out took a little doing once inside. A sign that stood in the lobby had recently been stolen and there was universal agreement when I commented, “That sure was ballsy.” Potential issues with the free on-street parking in front of the museum are avoided by displaying a dated tag provided with admission. When I started toward the elevator with my tag, a fellow whose name I failed to get volunteered to take it down for me. I was impressed before I even looked at the first exhibit.

“This is why the museum exists,” Ed, my guide, told me when we did reach that first exhibit. I had seen several pictures of Handsome over the years so had some idea of what he meant. Cincinnati’s first “police dog” was rescued from the city’s rough and tumble riverfront in the last years of the nineteenth century and served the department until his death in 1911. Handsome’s story, including numerous captures, is told here.

The word “Greater” in the museum’s name is significant. The museum honors not only the City of Cincinnati Police Department but many other law enforcement agencies in southern Ohio, southeast Indiana, and northern Kentucky. It first opened in 2002 on 8th Street on the west side of downtown then moved to its current Reading Road location in 2015. At the time of the move, bricks paving a walkway and inscribed with donor names were rescued and now line this hallway beneath rows of historic photos and certificates.

Most if not all of the people working at the museum are retired police officers. Both Ed and Rick, who split guiding me on what was essentially a personal tour, were. Ed mentioned that he had spent a few years on a SWAT team as we looked over the associated display. Rick may have also spent time with SWAT but I don’t know that. I do know that both of these guys were pretty familiar with much of the gear on display.

All police gear displayed in the museum is obsolete but some things are more obsolete than others. When the Civil War ended, Cincinnati was able to pick up plenty of surplus uniforms at a great price with only a change of buttons required to outfit the police. Alexander Bell patented the telephone in March of 1876. In September 1879, the first police telephone exchange in the world went live in Cincinnati.

Of course, there are lots of guns (all disabled) displayed in the museum along with other tools of the trade such as breathalizers, radar guns, and fingerprinting equipment. That communication console is a little more modern than the one my cousins frequently staffed when their dad was a police chief in Indiana but looks pretty crude when compared to the multi-screened internet-connected rig that my son operates as a police dispatcher in California.

There is one notable exception to the claim that everything in the museum is obsolete. Posters for the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” are kept current. Seeing them here reminded me of the days when reading these was what you did while waiting in line to buy stamps or get a package weighed. One of several reasons that they are no longer displayed is that the wall space is better used to promote the purchase of commemorative stamps and the like. The posters are still there but they are now kept in a binder behind the counter available for “on demand” viewing. Just like on the FBI website.

The pictured magazine is kept in protective custody but there is another copy nearby where the story of “Cincinnati’s Model Police Force” of 1957 can be accessed. The Greater Cincinnati Police Museum is open from 10:00 to 4:00 on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Book Review
Under the Catalpa Tree
Jim Grey

Like pictures? It’s got ’em. Like variety? Got that too. There are enough pictures to fill a deck of cards or a weekly calendar, which is not accidental. The premise for the book was writing an article to accompany a photograph every week for a year. That could very well be a student assignment in an overly long writing course and in a sense it is. Jim Grey assigned himself the exercise to, as he says, “strengthen this muscle”. He is referring to the writing muscle which can surely benefit from practice just as much as a musician’s skill or an athlete’s strength.

Even though photographs are at the heart of Under the Catalpa Tree, the book’s subtitle mentions only “stories and essays”. I’m guessing that is at least partially because only the stories and essays needed to be newly created for the book. The photos already existed from Grey’s many years of photographing the world around him. He doesn’t explain how the photos were selected. I am sure it was not completely random but there is tremendous variety. They range in quality from slightly fuzzy black-and-white snapshots taken years ago with a yardsale camera to crisp color images taken with high-end gear and well-developed skills. Some photos are digital but film is the source of many of the images since Grey collects — and heavily uses — film cameras. Among the subjects are family, friends, cars, houses, nature, and an abbey in Ireland.

Of course, the subjects of those stories and essays are as varied as the subjects of the photos. Some essays are tightly tied to the photo they accompany and describe exactly how the photo came to be and the thoughts it invoked. For others, the photo is essentially a jumping-off point for some more or less unrelated observations. In both cases, the thoughts and observations tend to be rather insightful.

A detail I appreciate is laying out the book so that all images are alone on a left-hand page. That happens naturally when the text occupies a single page, which is common, or three pages, which is not. There are quite a few two-page essays where a blank is used to get things back in synch. Totally worth it, in my opinion. Those pages, by the way, utilize Amazon’s premium paper which has the photos looking their best.

With all the variety I have mentioned a couple of times, it is not easy to nail down a concise description of Under the Catalpa Tree. The best I can do is this: An illustrated set of glimpses of one Indiana resident’s memories and thoughts from the end of the last millennium and the beginning of this one.

Under the Catalpa Tree: And Other Stories and Essays, Jim Grey, Midnight Star Press (January 1, 2024), 8.25 x 8.25 inches, 156 pages, ISBN 979-8869992697
Available in paperback through Amazon or as a PDF direct from the author here. 

Miami Valley Veterans Museum

It was during September’s Waco Aircraft Company centennial that I first became aware of the Miami Valley Veterans Museum sitting about a hundred yards south of Historic WACO Field. My friend Terry and I attended the centennial and have talked ever since about visiting the museum. We finally got it done on Thursday. I was surprised to see a dozen or so cars in the lot when I arrived a little ahead of Terry and a little ahead of the museum’s 10:00 opening. I initially thought I might have the opening time wrong but soon realized that the cars that beat me there belonged to volunteers taking care of things inside. This place clearly has a dedicated and energetic crew. During my brief wait, I snapped the picture at right and noted that the building’s signage included the first USSF insignia I had seen in the wild.

The museum was established in 2009 and spent its early years in the Masonic Building in downtown Troy. It moved here in 2021. One of the first things encountered on entering the museum is the History in a Box series. These are portable displays that are used in presentations at schools and such. Each box represents a different period beginning with pioneer days and currently ending with the Vietnam War. Assembling a box for the Middle East conflicts is in progress.

There are several other exhibits in the lobby area but the bulk of the displays are in a huge room behind it. Women are well represented throughout the museum but because March is Women’s History Month some items related to women in the military are displayed just outside the entrance to the main exhibit area. The 42-foot “Veterans Marching Through Time” mural is just inside the entrance. 

Exhibits in the big room are arranged chronologically beginning with the pioneer period. Marine uniforms from 1776 and 1863 can be seen in the first picture. The drum visible in both pictures is from the War of 1812.

These two photos are of more or less random items that caught my eye. The genuine “bolt action” long gun was handmade by the Viet Cong but doesn’t appear all that crude until you get close. The “ITALY SURRENDERS!” headline stood out because it is a lot more common to see headlines announcing the Japanese or German surrender. That’s quite understandable since those surrenders actually ended campaigns whereas defeating Italy was just a step on the way to victory in Europe.

Terry and  I had heard good things about the museum but it exceeded our high expectations in both the number and range of artifacts displayed. The friendliness and energy of the volunteers we met were also quite impressive. Open 10:00-2:00 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. There is no admission charge but donations are welcomed.

Small Wonders (And More)

It was several years ago that I first heard about a collection of miniatures in Maysville, Kentucky. I made a half-hearted attempt to find it one day but that was before smartphones, or at least before I learned how to use one, and I failed completely. A recent online mention again brought the collection to mind and this time there was enough information to easily locate it. I filled a wet and idle Wednesday, perfect for being inside a museum, with a visit. Those trip-triggering miniatures are housed at the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center along with two other major permanent exhibits and a research library.

One of those permanent exhibits is the Old Pogue Experience which provides a look at the area’s bourbon history. That’s where I began my visit. The photo at the top of the page is of the museum’s main entrance. Old Pogue has its own entrance although the two buildings are connected by a second-floor walkway. Production has not quite been continuous (Remember that Volstead Act thing?) but fifth and sixth generations of the family operate Old Pogue Distillery today with tastings available at the museum. The model of the 1910 Pogue Distillery could be considered a preview of coming attractions.

The Wormald Gallery is the other section of the museum I was thinking of when I spoke of two major permanent exhibits in addition to the miniatures. It is a mixture of truly permanent and rotating displays of regional history.  Among the many displays are two devoted to major exports of the past: tobacco and Rosemary Clooney.

Backstage Hollywood – The Photographs of Bob Willoughby is on display in the museum’s Calvert Gallery through March 16. Willoughby is the first still photographer to be invited by movie studios to work behind the scenes. The exhibit features unstaged glimpses of the likes of Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and others from the 1950s and ’60s.

My decision to save the Kathleen Savage Browning Miniatures Collection for last was indirectly validated when a docent I was chatting with remarked that this is where people spend the most time. This model of the Catherine Palace is currently displayed in what might be considered the museum’s lobby area as a bit of a tease. I passed it on the way to the Backstage Hollywood exhibit then studied it closer on my return. The palace and all items in the miniature collection are said to be 1/12 scale.

Spenser House stands just inside the entrance of the main gallery of miniatures.

Local landmarks also get space in the collection. The Russell Theater, where The Stars Are Singing, with Rosemary Clooney, premiered in 1953, and the 1886 Cox Building are both still standing in downtown Maysville. After leaving the museum, I grabbed pictures (here and here) of both.

The whole world of Mother Goose doesn’t take up a lot of space here. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod are quite small and so is that contrary Mary. The pretty maids in a row, and in her arms, are even smaller.

The tinyness of displayed items is not always apparent in photos so I propped a real U.S. quarter up in front of some musical instruments. The diameter of the quarter is 0.955 inches or 24.26 millimeters.  I can only guess at the diameter of the valves on that trumpet.

Book Review
America’s Greatest Road Trip!
Tom Cotter and Michael Ross

It’s a simple concept. Position yourself at the southernmost point in the continental United States then drive to the northernmost point in the U.S. accessible by road. The former is Key West, Florida. Deadhorse, Alaska, is the latter. The two are separated by a little over 4,000 miles as an extremely hardy all-weather crow might fly. Limited to traveling on the earth’s surface, Tom Cotter and Michael Alan Ross clocked 8,881 miles in making the connection. The difference is easily justified. Tom and Michael had more fun than any crow could even dream of.

Tom Cotter is best known as The Barn Find Hunter from the numerous books and videos he has produced about automotive treasures found in barns and the like. He is also a road-tripper whose adventures include a cross-country Model T drive documented in a book I reviewed here. Michael Alan Ross is a very successful automotive photographer whose work filled that Model T book. On that Model T drive, MAR, as he is commonly known, drove a chase vehicle. This time he and Cotter share the driving and space in the small camper they tow.

That camper was a new Basecamp 16X on loan from Airstream. The tow vehicle was a 2021 Bronco Outer Banks on loan from Ford. As Cotter tells it, he got the Bronco by telling Ford that Airstream had promised him a camper and he got the camper by telling Airstream that Ford had promised a Bronco.

Very early in the trip, the travelers broke one of the few guidelines they had established by jumping on I-75 while still in southern Florida. This is at odds with the “backroad USA” called out in the subtitle and Cotter readily admits that it is “cheating”. But it is understandable. With everything that lay ahead of them, there was a natural urge to leave the familiar behind and get on with the exotic. Before leaving Florida, they returned to the planned program by leaving the interstate for US 27.

They clipped a corner of Georgia, then crossed Alabama (with a stop in Muscle Shoals) before turning north in Louisiana to reach Tennessee. They entered Missouri via the bootheel and maintained a west-by-northwest course through that state and Kansas with appropriate adjustments to take in the big ball of twine in Cawker City. Then it was a little more directly north through Nebraska and the Dakotas with a Memorial Day pause at the Black Hills National Cemetery in South Dakota. There was a different sort of pause at the North Dakota line. Despite all of Cotter’s past travels, he had, at this point, visited just forty-nine states. North Dakota was number fifty.

North of Bismarck, Cotter and MAR picked up US 2 and headed west. That might not be the most direct route to Alaska but there were friends near Seattle and, as any good road-tripper knows, anything can be “on the way” if you look at it just right. Hitting Glacier National Park and the Going-to-the-Sun Road might have also been a factor in route selection but the scenic road was not yet open for the summer when they arrived. There was, of course, plenty of great scenery even without Going-to-the-Sun, and plenty of interesting people, too. 

Cotter and MAR both had friends in the Seattle area but swapping hellos was not the only reason for making that a target. The two travelers had planned for a month-long break in the middle of the trip to attend to their day jobs and visit family. The Bronco and Airstream would be left with friends while they flew home and back.

With the break out of the way, it was time to enter Canada and head for the beginning of the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. Cotter had a recent (but not quite current) edition of The Milepost with him. The Milepost is published annually and is close to indispensable for anyone traveling the Alaska Highway. That road is its primary focus and its initial reason for being but it now not only covers the Alaska Highway but just about every path for getting to and from it. That includes coming from Vancouver which is what Cotter and MAR were doing.

British Columbia and the Yukon Territory contain the bulk of the Alaska Highway with only the northernmost two hundred miles or so being in Alaska. Cotter reports that any pride associated with returning to the U.S. was short-lived and declares this “absolutely the worst roads” they had driven so far. The Alaska Highway officially ends at Delta Junction but Fairbanks is easily reached on what is sometimes seen as an extension, the Richardson Highway.

The Airstream was left with a cousin while Cotter and MAR tackled the final stretch to Deadhorse in the Bronco. Several aspects of this trip reminded me of my own 2016 drive to Alaska but perhaps none so much as the mention of “a mandatory pit stop at the Hilltop Restaurant north of Fairbanks”. Even though I did not drive north of Fairbanks on my own but used a commercial tour company to visit the Arctic Circle, we had breakfast at the Hilltop before hitting the Dalton Highway.

My visit to the Arctic Circle had been a one-day there-and-back affair. Cotter and Mar spent a night on the Dalton Highway in Wiseman and two nights at the end of the road in Deadhorse. Just reaching the end of the road would be enough for most people but Cotter went above and beyond by joining the Arctic Polar Bear Club with a dip in the 40°F Prudhoe Bay to bookend his dip in the “warmer than my morning shower” water at the start of the trip in Key West.

Looking back over what I’ve written, it seems I’ve been reviewing the trip rather than the book. Maybe there is at least a sense of it in the included thumbnail images. It has lots of MAR’s wonderful photos. The thumbnails offer hints of these although they don’t show that they are printed on heavyweight glossy paper which helps them look their best. Cotter’s words augment the photos (or vice versa) with details of the trip I have more or less summarized. Those words are at their best when telling about encounters with others. Some are people living along the route while others just happen to be traveling a piece of it at the same instant Cotter and MAR pass by. The ratio of the two sort of reverses itself as the trip progresses. Residents — some permanent and some temporary  — outnumber people actually in motion during the early portions of the trip but the situation is pretty much the opposite once the Dalton Highway is reached.

Some percentage of interesting people exists among both residents and travelers just about everywhere. Cotter manages to find them on a regular basis but he suggests that the percentage may increase toward the end of the trip. “Boring people generally don’t travel to Alaska’s outback,” he observes. I guess that means his job got easier the farther they traveled.

America’s Greatest Road Trip!: Key West to Deadhorse: 9000 Miles Across Backroad USA, Tom Cotter and Michael Alan Ross, Motorbooks (September 19, 2023), 9.45 x 10.71 inches, 192 pages, ISBN 978-0760381069
Available through Amazon.

Inaugural Cincinnati Chili Week

Today, February 25, 2024, is the very last day of the very first official Cincinnati Chili Week. With all the noise that has been made about this iconic Cincinnati food over the years, it is really hard to believe that this did not happen long ago. While waiting, I had my own “Chili Week” in 2013. Because I was in control, I synchronized it with this blog’s schedule and got in visits to seven different chili parlors for Chili All Week and It’s Cold, Too. With the official Chili Week week running Monday through Sunday, one day remains when the Sunday morning post is published but that also means it can include only six days of chili.

Eleven years is a long time ago. Of the dozen chili parlors covered in that 2013 post and a follow-on 5 More 4s second chapter, four have closed and another has relocated a block away. Three of the closures were of a brand’s only location and three brands that were part of my 2013 dozen have chosen not to participate. The result is that exactly six of the dozen chili brands I wrote about in 2013 were candidates for visits during the six days of Cincinnati Chili Week preceding this post. Coincidence? Perhaps, but, despite being saddened by the closures, I’m happy to be spared the need for tough choices for the official version of my unofficial Chili Week.

Monday: In 2013, the Monday of my full week of chili saw me at one of the two Empress Chili parlors that remained. That location has since closed so this year I headed to Empress Chili in Alexandria, KY. Other restaurants in the area serve Empress brand chili but this is the only place where the restaurant itself carries the Empress name. Their slogan, “The first edition of a Cincinnati Tradition” comes from the fact that Cincinnati-style chili originated in the Empress Chili parlor on Vine Street in 1922.

Tuesday: An article that mentioned Price Hill Chili was the seed that led to the 2013 week of chili and it is where I ate on the Sunday that got that week rolling. That was my first time ever at the restaurant but I’ve been back multiple times since then and was happy to make it my second stop for the first official Cincinnati Chili Week.

Wednesday: The spread of Cincinnati chili across the region began when an Empress Chili employee set up shop in an 8 by 30-foot space across the river in Newport, KY. The original, but greatly expanded, Dixie Chili location is still in operation and two more restaurants have been added. Today, owner Spiros Sarakatsannis ate lunch (chili & salad) and conducted a little business at a nearby table while I enjoyed my third 4-way of the week.

I went overboard on Wednesday and indulged in dessert while in Kentucky. In the same spirit that area sweet shops have served macarons and beignets disguised as hamburgers during Burger Week, Frosthaus, in Covington, served this sundae disguised as a 3-way. I had no idea that spaghetti ice cream even existed but apparently, it is fairly common in Germany and it’s the perfect basis for a Chili Week dessert.

Thursday: Cincinnati Chili Week is wrapped around National Chili Day and this is it. I celebrated the doubly special occasion at Blue Ash Chili. In April 2021, the store where it all started in 1969 was closed and the operation moved about 500 feet away to this strip mall location. It’s not as photogenic as the standalone building was but it looks great on the inside and the chili is just as good as it ever was. My standard order is a 4-way with onions but that’s a stock 3-way in the picture because that’s their Chili Week special.

Friday: There’s a lot to like about Camp Washington Chili including the fact that it is just a few blocks away from the American Sign Museum which makes it the perfect stop before or after a visit to the museum. I followed my fifth Chili Week check-in with a stop at the museum where I could hear sawing or grinding on the other side of the wall as work on the expansion area continues.

Saturday: Even though Cincinnati Chili Week promotional materials say there are 50+ Gold Star locations taking part in the event, I had my sixth and final 4/3-way of the week at the same one I visited for that 2013 blog post. At around two miles distance from my door, it’s the closest.

Skyline Chili is the 140-store gorilla that’s not in the room. According to event organizers, “They opted not to participate as they did not want to discount or offer a $5-$7 special.” I doubt the absence does much harm to the company and it did simplify my schedule for the week. C’est la vie.

A Hundred Looks at a Hundred Books

Last Wednesday’s post was the 100th book review published on this blog. Eight were of my own books and one (Book Review (not really), A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving) was, as the title proclaims, not really a review of the actual book. Still, that leaves 91 legitimate reviews of books I didn’t write and that’s many more than I anticipated when I posted the first review in November of 2011. The blog was just about three months old then. The About page says that the most likely subjects of books reviewed are “…those related to something I personally like such as old roads or cars.” That first review (Ghost Town of Route 66) clearly fits and I think the 100th (Walking to Listen) does too. It’s not about a particular road but it is about being “on the road” which seems close enough. Besides, the phrase is “such as old roads or cars” not “exclusively old roads and cars”. The truth is anything “I personally like” is fair game.

When I wrote that “old roads or cars” line, I expected the bulk of my reviews to involve one or the other but that has not been the case. An imprecise classification effort found only 5 reviews of books about or featuring cars. There were 32 about roads which means that 63 were about neither.

I was not surprised to see that only 9 of the books I reviewed were fiction. Books are either fiction or not but they can appear in more than one of my arbitrary subject categories. Those counts are:

  • 37 – history
  • 32 – road
  • 25 – memoir
  • 16 – photo
  • 15 – guide
  • 12 – travelog
  • 5 – cars
  • 1 – physics

I won’t even attempt a “Best of” lists but I do have some “Most Memorable” picks. That I picked several photo books did not surprise me but seeing that three of my picks involved motorcycles was unexpected. No Room for Watermelons tells of Ron Fellowes’ ride through fifteen countries on a 1910 motorcycle. Hues of my Vision, by Ara Gureghian, and The World from My Bike, by Anna Grechishkina, visually document their authors’ life on the road over several years. Living on 3 wheels (a sidecar carried his dog) ended for Ara when back problems made it impossible to ride. Anna’s travels were interrupted when her homeland was invaded and she returned to Ukraine to help in its defense. I hope with all my heart that there is a sequel.

Route 66 Sightings coverTen Million Steps - coverI clearly have a weakness for photo books but these two are also road books. In 2004, Joe Hurley took the steps and Travis Lindhorst took the pictures for Ten Million Steps on Route 6. Three of Route 66’s finest (Shellee Graham, Jim Ross, and Jerry McClanahan) collaborated on Route 66 Sightings which might be the best advertisement for a decommissioned highway you’ll ever see.

Outside the Wire coverEvery member of the trio responsible for Route 66 Sightings turns out plenty of exceptional solo work. Most of it is connected to Route 66 but this book from Jim Ross is an exception. It’s the story of his time in Vietnam. In my review, I said of Jim that, “What he does do is bring veteran skills to the telling of a rookie’s story.” I think that’s why this book is so memorable to me.

This is one of the five “car books” I counted. The car is a 1926 Model T that carries Darlene Dorgan and her friends on some wonderful adventures in the 1930s. Darlene’s Silver Streak tells of those adventures as well as the car’s modern-day restoration and display. I bought the book when I first saw the car on display which is probably part of the reason I find it memorable.

The count will not stop at one hundred, of course. In fact, a couple more are already in the works. One is sort of about a road. The other is not. I really see no reason to expect the mix of topics to change much in the future except for a probable decrease in the number of physics books reviewed. 

 

The First Day of Pompeii:
The Exhibition

Pompeii: The Exhibition opened at the Cincinnati Museum Center on Friday. I would have been in the first group admitted and possibly even the first person admitted if a guard had not blocked the stairs and escalators until precisely 10:00 AM. That was the official exhibit opening time but an unguarded elevator a few feet from the stairs meant that a group of patrons were receiving their pre-entry briefing when I and the rest of the walkers arrived. It’s always good to begin the day with something funny.

Following our own briefing, we entered, received another short briefing beneath the screen in the opening picture, and were then treated to an introductory video on that screen. At the video’s end, doors opened on a life-size marble statue of the goddess Aphrodite. Much like the moon, this is the view of the goddess that we most often see although there is another.

Pompeii was a prosperous port city and art was plentiful. Public spaces and private homes contained decorative mosaics, frescoes, fountains, and more statues.

There were plenty of practical items too. Examples are scales used in the market, fishing hooks, and cooking utensils. I know I’m not the only one with a cast iron skillet that looks almost exactly like this bronze one from Pompeii.

I suppose these items are also practical in their own way. Gladiatorial contests were primarily held for entertainment but staying alive was definitely a practical concern for the participants. Next to the displays of weapons and armor, a holographic video about the various types of combat got its share of attention.

Also getting attention was a small room offset from the primary flow. Both entry briefings had described the special markings for this adult-oriented display in case parents wanted to make sure their charges avoided it. If any did, it wasn’t obvious. A sign begins with the astute observation that “Ancient Roman sexual customs were different from those of our contemporary society.” Back then arriving with bells on really meant something.

Theatrical entertainment was quite popular in all of Rome including Pompeii. Actors wore masks to establish their characters. Here is a fresco depicting a pair of masks and a full-size marble mask. Both of these were purely decorative as masks actually worn on stage were made of lighter materials such as linen.

Another set of warnings in those entry briefings concerned loud noises and bright lights in the “4D eruption theater”. I do not doubt that these could be disturbing for some but most will find them underwhelming. Same with the slightly moving floor which I assume is the fourth dimension. If you enter expecting a high-definition video of the eruption shown on a large flat screen you will see an extremely good one. Expect more and you might be disappointed.

Images of the casts of the victims of the eruption are the most familiar and also the most disturbing. These are not human bodies but shapes formed within the volcanic ask where bodies once were. The quote on the wall in the first picture is from Pliny the Younger who watched the eruption from a little more than a dozen miles away and then documented it. In this exhibit, many of the casts are displayed in front of large photographs which I assume depict the situation in which they were found.

Exit is, of course, through the gift shop where we are reminded that striking a good final pose will greatly increase your chances of appearing on a shot glass or refrigerator magnet in a couple of millennia.

Aphrodite’s butt and iffy shot glasses aside, this is an impressive exhibit that provides a detailed and accurate look at a real Roman city of two thousand years ago. Pompeii: The Exhibition runs through July 28.

Book Review
Walking to Listen
Andrew Forsthoefel

Twice I have posted previews of books. This was the subject of the first one back in 2013. The second came along in 2015, and I believe it was posted with the hope of boosting a Kickstarter campaign to publish the previewed book. I’m not quite sure why the first preview was posted. Maybe I just felt an overwhelming urge to write something. It does happen. Whatever the reason, I was obviously quite impressed with the This American Life episode where I first learned of Andrew Forsthoefel and his recently completed walk, and I really expected the book to appear shortly. It did not.

In a paragraph at the end of the second book preview, I reported that I was still following Forsthoefel’s blog and there was still hope for the book but that my confidence was weakening. I eventually stopped following the blog and missed the book’s publication a couple of years later. A recent Amazon Associates change (They dropped support for links to images.) had me revisiting all of my reviews and making changes to many. That Walking to Listen preview required no changes but looking it over jogged some memories and I learned that the book had been published — about seven years ago — and was now available.

The recently completed walk that caught my interest back in 2013 was 4,000 miles long and had taken nearly a year. The book documents the journey in the tradition of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley and William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways which means it is much more about people and experiences than places. Of course traveling by vehicle, as Steinbeck and Heat-Moon did, is a lot different than walking, which Forsthoefel did. There is a third book I often thought about while reading Walking to Listen. Ten Million Steps on Route 6 is the story of Joe Hurley’s walk across America. That’s closer to Forsthoefel’s experience but Hurley had a chase car that picked him up at the end of each day while Forsthoefel often slept right where he stopped walking in a tent he carried.

“WALKING TO LISTEN” was written on a small sign that Forsthoefel carried. It was a visual aid when explaining what he was doing. I suspect it gave more of a sense of mission to his walk than simply speaking the words would have. Maybe it made people less reluctant to speak into the small recorder that Forsthoefel used in interviews. Being twenty-three and fresh out of college probably helped too. The bulk of Walking to Listen consists of Forsthoefel telling his story in his own words although he does use some quotes from interviews in the telling. But every chapter is preceded by a verbatim transcript of a portion of one of those interviews. The person or persons speaking is identified along with the location and approximate date and the transcript follows. Some are very short excerpts. None are longer than a couple of pages but they do add a little “live-action” to the well-crafted retellings that fill most of the pages.

The “fresh out of college” situation I mentioned is one of the reasons for the walk. Graduation is sometimes seen as a time to access things before making the next commitment and so it was for Forsthoefel. He frequently referred to life after college as “coming of age”. He really was walking to listen and hoped to hear some advice. But there was another source of uncertainty in his life. His parents’ divorce had surprised him and left him unsure of his relationship with his father. He started the walk hoping to get some help with that too.

Although Forsthoefel wanted mostly to learn something about himself, he couldn’t help but learn something about the world just as the other three writers I’ve mentioned did. Sadly, one of the biggest things he learned in 2012 was the same thing Steinbeck learned in 1962: racism in the U.S. is quite healthy. It is usually more subtle and there might even be a little less but it did not go away during the intervening half century. Forsthoefel happened to be in Selma, Alabama, on Martin Luther King Day. One of the people he spent time with was the city’s African American police chief. Clearly, progress had been made since March of 1965. Yet, on his last morning in town, he runs into a man he had met earlier. There are others with him and at one point he whispers to Forsthoefel, “But some of them are still living in the past, if you know what I mean. So don’t bring up integration. Just play it cool.”

Forsthoefel also learned that generosity, too, is quite healthy. People of all sorts offered help that ranged from a single donut to housing and feeding him for several days. He was grateful for every helping hand, of course, while realizing that some of that help would not have been there had he been anything other than a young white non-threatening male.

The walk can be considered a success I think. Forsthoefel probably didn’t get as much advice on “coming of age” as he hoped but he did get quite a bit and the confidence that comes from walking solo across the country no doubt helped a lot. The relationship with his father also seemed to be in pretty decent shape when the walk ended. At least one person reviewing the book thought too much space was given to these personal issues. I thought they were discussed just enough to provide some understanding of why the walk was happening.

I did not read this book to help with my own coming of age or with parental issues. It’s a little late for both. I read it to get another person’s view of the country and I got that — at three miles an hour.

Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time, Andrew Forsthoefel, Bloomsbury Publishing (2017), 5.5 x 8.15 inches, 400 pages, ISBN 978-1632867018
Available through Amazon.


100th Book Review
Responding to that Amazon change I mentioned involved filtering the list of blog entries and learning I had written 98 book reviews. One more has been published since which makes this the 100th book review published on Denny G’s Road Trips Blog.